The Encyclopedia of Protestantism: Volume 2 D–K
References and Further Reading
Baptism, Eucharist & Ministry. Faith and Order Paper no. 111. Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982.
Barnett, James M. The Diaconate: A Full and Equal Order. New York: Harper and Row, 1981.
Echlin, Edward P. The Deacon in the Church, Past and Future. Staten Island, NY: Alba House, Society of St. Paul, 1971.
Lauterer, Heide-Marie. Liebestätigkeit für die Volksgemeinschaft Der Kaiserswerther Verband deutscher Diakonissenmutterhäuser in den ersten Jahren des NS-Regimes. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994.
Martimort, Aimé. Deaconesses: An Historical Study. Translated by K.D.Whitehead. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986.
McKee, Elsie. Diakonia in the Classical Reformed Tradition and Today. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm.B.Eerdmans, 1989.
——. John Calvin on the Diaconate and Liturgical Almsgiving. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1984.
Olson, Jeannine. Calvin and Social Welfare: Deacons and the Bourse française. Cranbury, NJ: Susquehanna University Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1989.
——. Deacons and Deaconesses through the Centuries: One Ministry, Many Roles. St.
Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1992.
Plater, Ormonde. Many Servants: An Introduction to Deacons. Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1991.
JEANNINE E.OLSON
Christianity does not deny death. Jesus, it attests, “was crucified, dead and buried.” However, in Christian perspective “death” has many faces. It is “natural,” established by the Creator. It limits the time of human existence and thus makes it important, and points it beyond itself to the eternal God. Natural death is penultimate; it is death unto God, who alone is ultimate. Death is also unnatural. In this fallen, sinful world, death pretends to be ultimate, the last word, an absolute nothingness that threatens the meaning of existence and in the end would separate the individual from the world, from others, and finally from God.
As the power that separates existence from God, death is indeed the power of SIN. As a true human being Jesus suffered this sinful death; as the Messiah he did so for the SALVATION of humankind. His death was a martyr’s death—the natural and expected out-come of the life he led. The cross was also a sinful “no” to the intrusion of God into this death-defined world. On the other hand, it is the overriding divine “no” of God’s judgment on the “no” of a sinful world. In Jesus’s death God, not death, has the last word, the word of forgiveness and reconciliation unto God.
With the loss of this perspective in the early decades of the twentieth century, discourse on death was silenced. However, in the 1970s following the publication of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s On Death and Dying, Americans realized that after all death and dying are universal, “natural” phenomena subject to rational reflection and control. Consequently there appeared a plethora of excellent books and school courses on “death and dying,” exploring all facets of the phenomena. These have helped the church understand just “what” this phenomenon of death is, but leave questions of meaning generally unexplored.
See also Heaven and Hell
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